There are minimalists. I’m a maximalist.

Oh, I ’m not a hoarder. There will be plenty of open space for you to walk through my house if you come to visit, but please don’t look in my shirt drawer, my upstairs closet, my outdoor storage room or underneath anything else.

The other day, I found a shirt that had “Dukes” on its front, a team I had played for in a men’s softball league more than 25 years ago. Who knows? Maybe I’ll wear it again someday just for the memories.

I dug a little deeper in the drawer and an orange T-shirt came out with the word “POPS” (Past Our Prime) faded above an image of a baseball that sports a crazy face printed inside the seams.

For many years, a bunch of retired guys from Bear Creek Lakes and I played competitive whiffle ball every Tuesday morning in the summer.

We all got too old to play anymore, but I certainly can’t throw away this shirt for it would be like throwing away the home runs I hit and the friendships I made.

Upstairs, inside boxes that have moved with me from one residence to another hold lots of fishing stuff: reels and lures I’ll probably never use again, but you never know that I might.

I keep remnants of my 38-year teaching career in plastic storage containers. I have letters written to me by students I had taught, plaques of commemoration from both teaching and coaching.

One plaque from the year 1968, given to me in gratitude for coaching a bunch of 9-year-old baseball kids, has a golden hitter swinging a bat, but the bat had broken off many years ago and has never been found.

I’m going to want to do something with all of this. Perhaps one day I’ll have a memorabilia room with all my sports and teacher stuff pasted upon the walls.

Well, maybe not.

I own my fair share of tools put away in this place and that place. If you ask me where my hammer, tape measure, Phillips head, and flat head screw drivers are kept I tell you right away.

Wrenches, pliers, paint brushes, putty knives, I can find them, too, if you give me a few minutes. Then there is this thingamajig and that doohickey. I really can’t tell you what they are for, but hey, you never know. Someday, I might need a thingamajig and a doohickey to fix a whatchamacallit.

Everyone has a junk drawer. I have paper clips, tape, rubber bands, safety pins, some screws, batteries and parts left over from stuff I put together.

And yet, when I need a rubber band, I can’t find one in the junk drawer. Nope. Not there, but I know I saw one in there last week when I was looking for something else. I’ll go to the store, get some rubber bands and sure enough, a week later, I open the junk drawer and there’s one I was missing staring me right in the face.

I have a box of pine cones I picked up last year. I might want to make something creative with them someday.

I kept the box that held my TV I’ve had on the wall for six years just in case I move someday and want to take the TV with me. I have two Bose radios, one downstairs and an old one shoved into a closet.

A drawer is packed with wires and cables from electronic devices, some of which I have no idea what they connect with, but hey, you never know that I might figure that out and need to use them.

I have half-empty paint cans stored away, half-burned candles stuffed into a box, lots of lights and light bulbs, a large glass container for making sun tea, a milkshake maker and a really powerful Ninja electric blender that I haven’t used since I don’t know when.

I might need the assortment of bungee cords to wrap around things or the George Foreman grill if I don’t feel like using the grill I have on the back deck.

I have three bowling balls, a wine cooler that chills one bottle to a perfect temperature shoved behind a box of used cleaning supplies and insecticides.

I’ll forget that I have that box and go out and buy what I already have, and then it becomes part of the collection.

Author Nicole Krauss wrote: “At the end, all that’s left of you are your possessions. Perhaps that’s why I’ve never been able to throw anything away. Perhaps that’s why I hoarded the world: with the hope that when I died, the sum total of my things would suggest a life larger than the one I lived.”

I’ve been told that before I die, I should make it easy for whoever cleans out my house, but Krauss makes a point. Our stuff does define us.

From the Hopalong Cassidy mug I have since I was 4 years old to the gold medal Cub Scout collar I found in the street when I was riding my bike, everything adds to the story of my life.

My prize possession is a 1932 Remington Noiseless Typewriter I bought for five bucks at a garage sale that I doubt was ever used.

If the digital world and the internet crash into oblivion, this black beauty sits upon my cabinet just waiting for my fingers to touch its keys.

You never know. I might need it someday to write these columns.

Email Rich Strack at richiesadie11@gmail.com